


after all these years

by cowboy_casey



Category: Unus Annus - Fandom
Genre: Dissociation, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Manipulation, Panic Attacks, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Self-Harm, also the tags apply to a past relationship - ethan and amy are good, i promise im trying not to make this story as dark as the tags make it seem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26659573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboy_casey/pseuds/cowboy_casey
Summary: Mark's past relationship isn't something he likes to dwell on for too long, for a lot of reasons. If anyone asks why, he tells them that it ended badly, that he wasn't what she wanted.While that's true, he knows it has a lot more to do with how often he wakes up in a blind panic, how dirty he feels after thinking about her, and how she seems to haunt him years later.-----Mark's dealing with the fallout of an abusive relationship, and doesn't understand why he still hurts after years of being away from her. Ethan and Amy try to help as best they can.
Relationships: Amy Nelson/Ethan Nestor, Mark Fischbach/Amy Nelson, Mark Fischbach/Amy Nelson/Ethan Nestor, Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor
Comments: 113
Kudos: 356





	1. One

_”You’re tired?” Her voice was cold, nothing like the warm, inviting tone of before. Eyebrow cocked in disbelief, she scoffed. Mark could only watch the light of her computer shift off her hair as she moved. He just wanted to sleep. “Neither of us believe that, Mark.”_

_“I’m telling the truth!” His eyes shifted from her hair to the webcam, trying to convince her of something she should’ve taken at face value. “I had a really long day today, and I don’t -”_

_Shaking her head, she cut him off. “Just say you don’t love me anymore.” Mark didn’t say anything about how obviously fake her teary voice was. “You… Think I’m gross. You think I’m disgusting. I’ll just leave then -”_

_“No!” The word came out before he could stop himself. She was all he had. “No, I don’t think you’re gross.” His throat ached as he swallowed and the computer light reflected off the wall behind her, illuminating a glossy poster. “I’ll - I’ll do it.”_

_A small smile played on her lips, and she sat back in her chair to watch the show. “Good.”_

Mark sits up with a start, breath clogged in his throat. He’s at home, in his room. Away from her. Away from that room and that computer and that app and that goddamn _smile_.

Amy shifts in the bed next to him, and her presence helps ground him in the present. He’s safe here - he doesn’t need to worry about anything anymore. She’s not here, she can’t hurt him. 

Slowly, he creeps out of the bed, careful to plant his socked feet solidly on the floor as he stands. A glass of water is so tempting right now, and it’s late enough that he doubts Amy will wake up. 

His socks make a quiet shuffling noise as he makes his way to the kitchen, and he chooses to focus on that rather than the hazy memories wafting through his brain. It’s easier, and keeps him from breaking down completely. 

The rest of the night is spent on autopilot, going from the kitchen to the various other rooms in his house like a ghost. Sleeping seems like an impossibility, and he’s too restless to focus on much else. It isn’t a surprise when the sun rises and he’s still awake, staring listlessly at the wall. 

The door behind him opens quietly, and Amy peeks her head inside. “Good morning,” she hums, flashing him a blinding smile. Her voice startles him out of his daze, and he blinks wearily up at her. “How early did you get up?” 

“Oh, just an hour or so ago,” he lies. The last time he checked the clock it had been two in the morning, and if the blinking red numbers on the clock are anything to go by, it’s now seven. Had he really been checked out for that long?  
Amy bites her lip and walks over to lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. His throat clogs again, and the burning on his shoulder makes him want to scream. “Are you sure? You seem tired.” 

_”You’re not tired. You just don’t love me.”_

“I’m not tired!” He shot back, eyes widening. The chair knocks into the desk as he whips around, and he winces at the harsh bang of the wood against metal. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think I was tired. I’m not. Tired.” 

The hand that was on his shoulder now hovers at her side, and he briefly wonders if he hurt her by spinning around so fast. “What?” There’s a strange lilt in her voice. Is she mad at him? “You seem tired Mark, are you sure?” The overhead light bounces off her hair as she moves closer, and suddenly Mark can’t breathe. 

_”Prove it.”_

Her skin is warm when he touches it, and he hopes she can’t feel the way his hands tremble. The soft pink shorts she’s wearing brush against his legs as he pulls her closer to him, and a part of him wishes she was wearing anything else. They’re too nice to be ruined for him like this. 

“Mark?” She murmurs, slowly understanding that he wants her to sit on her lap. “What’s going on?”

The pink fabric brushes against his fingers as he lifts the hem of her shirt. He really did like these shorts. “I’m not tired,” he murmurs. 

Amy makes a small noise in the back of her throat, and reaches up to grab his wrists. “Mark? What are you doing?”

“I’m not tired,” he repeats, hands flexing around the shirt. Doesn’t she understand what he’s doing? This is the reason she asked, isn’t it? “I’m proving that I’m not tired.” The fan in the room turns towards him, and the cool air on his skin is too much. 

“By…” She trails off, and gently moves Mark’s hands back to his sides. A flash of panic coils in his gut. What did he do wrong? “By doing _this?_ I…” Her face scrunches up, and any other time Mark would find it endearing. “You don’t need to prove you’re not tired.” She finally settles on, getting off his lap. “I’m not sure I want to do _this_ right now, anyway.” 

Mark’s face falls, and he grips the arms of the chair tightly. If Amy didn’t want to do anything, he wasn’t going to force her, of course. But… Did he have something to do with it? 

Seemingly reading his mind, Amy laid her hand on his wrist again. The touch didn’t hurt any less, even if he didn’t have to prove himself. “It’s not because of you,” she assured, rubbing her hand up and down his forearm. “I just woke up, though.”  
He nodded dumbly, watching as she walked out of the room. A sense of relief filled him as the door closed behind her, and he sagged against the desk. Mark was safe here. Amy wouldn’t do that to him - wouldn’t hurt him the way she had. 

So why was he still so affected by her? After all of these years, why was this happening now? 

Letting out a shaky breath, he stood up. He had things he needed to do - this could be dealt with later. 

═ ═ ═ ╰☆╮ ═ ═ ═

“So we need to take our shirts off, probably.” Ethan suggests, looking at the tubs of slime. “I don’t want mine stained.” 

Mark isn’t listening, though. Not really. His mind is stuck on the idea of being shirtless on camera - letting everyone see him partially naked. 

“Mark?” The younger boy goads, shifting towards him. He doesn’t want to do this - he doesn’t want to be shirtless around him, or Amy, or anyone. “Are you gonna take off your shirt?” 

Shaking his head, Mark turns away to look at the slime. His head is foggy, and it’s hard to focus on anything specific. A muted sense of panic is rising in his throat, and he can’t _do_ anything about it. The video requires him being shirtless, and it’s not like he hasn’t exposed himself like that before. Hell, he and Ethan had even painted each other naked! It shouldn’t be that big a deal. 

But it _is_ , and he can’t explain why. 

“Mark?” Ethan asks again, walking toward him. His arm is out, and Mark can only think about how Amy’s gentle touch burned before. He shies away, and the way his breathing picks up only makes him panic more.

“Hey, hey breathe for me, please?” Amy asks, snapping him out of his head for a second. She doesn’t move towards him like Ethan did, and he wishes he could thank her for it. “There you go, calm down.” 

_Finally_ Ethan puts his hand down, and takes a few steps away from Mark. “Can you breathe in for four counts?” He asks. Mark’s never heard his voice that soft. “There, now hold it for seven… breathe out for eight. Good.” 

After a few minutes, his breathing is mostly back to normal, and he glances wearily towards the slime. Their eyes feel like they’re burning a hole in him, and he shivers under the intensity. “Sorry,” he whispers. His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “I don’t know… why that happened.” 

“It’s fine.” Amy says, walking back behind the camera. She sounds like she’s talking to a scared child, but Mark can’t say anything about it. He _feels_ like a scared child. “You can wear your shirt, Mark.” 

Ethan enters the room, holding something crinkly. Mark doesn’t know when he left. “Actually, you can wear this,” he offers, and the older looks up to see him holding a garbage bag. “Your shirt doesn’t get stained, you’re not shirtless, and you’ll look more like a cryptid. It’s a win-win-win!” 

Mark laughs softly at the idea, but takes the bag nonetheless. It might work, in all honesty. “Thanks, dude.” 

He leaves the room to change, and when he comes back they move on with the video like normal. It’s… fine. Even if he doesn’t know _why_ it happened. 

Mark left _her_ years ago. Why is he acting like this now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi there !! if you recognize my username, you probably know that i'm also working on running on empty atm. i promise i haven't abandoned that fic - i still have a lot of motivation and plans for the story! i just,, have More motivation for this right now. 
> 
> anyway, i hope you enjoyed the first chapter !! as always, i'm writing this from both my own experiences and research, and am going to try my best to portray this as realistically as possible. /However/, if anything seems offensive or inaccurate please don't hesitate to tell me! i would hate to put misinformation out there, or minimize how shit like this truly affects people.
> 
> i hope y'all have a great day !! :D


	2. Two

_”You deserve this,” she whispered, and even though the audio was distorted and grainy Mark could hear the malicious glee in her voice. “You’re so pretty I can’t help but want to see you, princess.”_

_Clenching his fists, he stripped off his shirt, exposing his naked chest. The room was cold, and he wanted to put his clothes back on and sleep the day away. “What do you want from me?”_

_Her eyes widened in anger, and she flopped backwards in her chair. “I just want to see you! Is that too much for a girlfriend to want?”_

_The gross sludge in his chest and the looming sense of_ wrongness _said yes. His mouth, however, gave her the answer she wanted._

_“No,” the word felt wrong in his throat, like the months of disuse had caused him to forget the pronunciation. “I’m just… tired.”_

_Her eyes flashed, and the easy smile on her face melted. “What did I say about being tired?”_

_“To not be.”_

_“Good!” She paused a moment, and then waved her hand jerkily. “Well, are you going to be a good boyfriend or what?”_

_Mark was so tired of being a good boyfriend._

A flash of white from his monitor snaps him out of his daze, and he blinks blearily at the screen. What had he been doing? 

Slightly more alert now, he looks over at his hand and releases the white-knuckle grip that he had on the mouse. That must’ve been what opened the new tab. Shaking the ache out of his hand, he looks back at the computer, and scans the other tabs opened. 

Oh, yeah. That’s what he was doing. 

Mark closes the new tab, and the quiz he had opened before pops back up. Bright purple letters blink back at him. Before he can stop himself, he reads them again, blinking rapidly. _Were you sexually abused?_

It’s stupid to ask an online quiz something like that. There’s no way for a computer to answer for the ache deep in his bones, the subtle sense of _wrong_ he’s felt for years. But he’s desperate for validation, and it seems like this is the only solution. 

Taking a deep breath, he closes the window, too tired to try and continue down that rabbit hole. He needs to be up early tomorrow - he can’t be staying up all night again, searching for an answer he’ll never find. Even if he stubbornly holds onto the hope that he will. 

The only noise in the room is the shuffle of his socks against the carpet as he carefully turns off the lights, and the utter silence makes him wonder what time it is. Had he already wasted the night away? 

As he rounds the corner of the hallway and looks at the clock on the oven, he’s pleasantly surprised to see that it’s only seven. Unfortunately, the pleasant feeling is short-lived as he realizes what that means. Even at seven the house is usually buzzing with some kind of life. 

Slightly panicking now, he flings the door to his bedroom open. It knocks gently against the wall as he does so, and he winces at the noise. Amy just looks up from her phone with her eyebrows raised, and just like before the sense of relief that had filled him was quickly replaced with worry. 

“Woah, there, champ. Never seen someone so excited for bedtime.” She murmurs, letting a small smile make its way onto her face. “What, did you miss me?” 

Mark knows she’s teasing. Logically, he knows that. But he can’t stop comparing Amy to _her_. “Sorry,” he chokes, jerking a hand out. It hangs uselessly in the air, and he brings it back to his side, internally cursing himself at his stupidity. “I didn’t mean to hit the wall. Sorry.” 

Her face falls at his tone, and she shifts closer to him, patting the bed next to her. The phone is discarded at her side, and Mark can’t help but want her to pick it up again. He can’t handle all of her attention being on him or the way her eyes feel like lasers burning straight through his clothes and leaving him exposed. It’s too much. “Something’s bothering you. C’mere,” she orders, and Mark knows well enough by now he can’t refuse an order. 

When he finally sits down, she runs a hand through his hair. It’s meant to be soothing, but he can’t help but think she’s just trying to trap him under her fingers.“What’s going on? You’ve been acting weird lately.” 

“Nothing,” he lies, “I’ve just been -” the word “tired” dies on his tongue, and he swallows harshly. “Busy. I’ve been busy lately.” 

Amy raises a skeptical eyebrow, and moves her hand to his neck. He kind of wants to cry. “You don’t sound too sure, baby. Let’s talk about it?” 

Mark opens his mouth, but closes it a moment later - there’s nothing to say. He wants to tell Amy about this. To open up and admit that he’s upset and _scared_. But he can’t find the words.

And that makes him wonder if he even truly wants to tell her. Does he really want to admit that he let _her_ walk all over him? Does he even want to admit that to _himself?_ What kind of self-respecting person lets someone order them around like that and then get upset years later? 

Finally, he shakes his head and scoots away from her and the burning hand on his neck. “No, I’m sure, Ames.” She makes a noise in her throat, and Mark’s briefly brought back to when he tried to prove he wasn’t tired. “Let’s just go to bed.” 

Amy’s about to say something when he flops back on the bed, and her protest is quickly replaced by a weary sigh. “Okay,” she mutters, running her hands down her thighs. His eyes are drawn to the movement, and he feels disgusted with himself for looking. “We can talk about it later.” 

Choosing to ignore that, Mark turns over in the bed, facing away from her. He doesn’t trust himself not to look at her, to ogle and make her uncomfortable just like _she_ did to him. Hurting Amy is the absolute last thing he wants to do, and after the way he practically forced himself on her the other day he doesn’t want to risk anything. 

_”Don’t whine about it.” She hissed, glaring at him through the monitor. “You’re a_ man _\- you’re supposed to like this. Besides,” she frowned, tightening her face in a way Mark knew meant she was about to start fake-crying, “I’m surprised you haven’t assaulted me yet! Everyone knows men are just sex-crazed animals.” Not knowing how to respond, he just bit his lip and nodded._

Mark’s breath stutters at the sudden reminder, and he grasps the bed sheets tightly. Fuck, she was right, wasn’t she? She always was. Tears blur his vision and he sniffles quietly. 

He knows Amy can hear the irregularities in his breath, but neither talks about it. The mutual understanding between them is one of the things he loves about her, and he twists his arm behind him in search of his hand. As she intertwines their fingers, her other hand slowly rests on his back. Nothing more is said about his halting breath or shaking shoulders, and he falls asleep trying to guess the shapes she’s drawing on his back.

═ ═ ═ ╰☆╮ ═ ═ ═

When he wakes up, the warm sunlight filtering through his room is the first thing he notices. The second is that it’s absolutely not six in the morning, and he should’ve been up hours ago.

“Shit, shit,” he hisses, stumbling out of bed. The duvet tangles with his leg, and he lands harshly on the floor. “Fuck!” 

Throwing the blanket off of him, he sits up and snatches at his phone, quickly unlocking it and checking the time. 8:39 A.M. shines up at him, and he dejectedly throws his head back against the side of the bed. Ethan was supposed to be here hours ago for filming. Hopefully Amy got up earlier than him and was able to let their friend inside.

Knowing there’s no use in dwelling on the past, he stands up, sighing heavily. Better late than never, right? His joints pop as he stretches out, and he shuffles over to the bedroom door, shivering at the chilly floor against his feet. 

As he walks, the sounds of Ethan and Amy’s hushed voices waft out from the kitchen, and he slows his pace as he rounds the corner in the hallway. It’s not really eavesdropping if he just _happened_ to be in the right place at the right time, right? 

“I don’t know what’s going on - he’s usually not like this.” Amy whispers. Who are they talking about? Growing curious, he shuffles closer, leaning around the wall with baited breath.

Ethan just tsks in response, and Mark can imagine him worrying his lip. “I know. He’s usually… direct about this stuff. Him not saying anything is really worrying.” 

“You’re telling me... I feel bad talking about it without Mark here.” Oh. They were talking about him.

Wasting no more time, Mark briskly walks into the kitchen, plastering a smile onto his face. “Talking about what without me?” he asks innocently, making his way to the coffee machine. He can practically feel the way they stiffen up, and a small spark of satisfaction runs through him.

“Uh…” Amy starts, eloquently. The time for a believable lie passes, and she sighs, defeated. “We were talking about… you. I’m worried, Mark.” Ethan nods in agreement, shifting his weight from foot to foot. 

“You’ve been acting weird, dude. And you aren’t talking to either of us.” He pauses, furrowing his brow. “Is… Is everything good?” 

Mark splutters at that, knocking his hand against the cup still filling up with coffee. He jerks his hand back, cursing, and scrambles to pick up the cup. Before he can even reach for them Ethan hands him a paper towel, and he carefully dabs at the boiling liquid.

Once everything calms down, he finally turns back to the two. They’re both looking at him like he’s a wounded dog, and it takes all he has not to lash out at them. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” he settles on, gripping the lip of the counter tightly. “I’m fine.” 

Ethan raises his eyebrows. “You had a panic attack about being shirtless. Try again.” 

Mark’s eyes widen, and he looks over at Amy - almost as if he’s expecting her to correct him. Instead of arguing, she just shrugs and looks back at Ethan. “A panic attack? No, I just got... a little worked up. Not - not a panic attack. How would you know, anyway?” The last part comes out slightly more defensive than he likes, and he curls his hands tighter around the counter. His hands are going numb. 

“No, I’m pretty sure that was a panic attack,” Ethan counters. “I’ve had them myself. There’s nothing to be, like, ashamed of or anything.” 

Amy chimes in then, mirroring his position against the opposite counter. “Ethan’s right, you know. We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s up.” 

“I don’t want your help,” he _still_ sounds defensive, so he takes a deep breath and tries again. “I don’t _need_ your help - there’s nothing to help with.” 

After that, the kitchen descends into silence. Amy opens her mouth occasionally, but everytime she does she cuts herself off and closes it again. Ethan seems stuck in the same boat - shifting back and forth, obviously wanting to say something, but seemingly not having the right words. Mark knows how they feel. 

Finally, he grows bored of their game of chicken and turns around to begin to make a fresh cup of coffee. He’s going to need it for today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ack finally updated !! let's all just ignore how i'm ignoring my schoolwork rn aha
> 
> anyway !! i hope y'all have a good day :DD <3


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: vomiting, non-graphic flashbacks, and a panic attack

Mark stops in front of the mirror, letting his eyes roam over his exposed chest. There are curves and dips he’s never noticed before, not like this, and he catches himself briefly wondering if She would like them. If She would bite her lip and lean forward like she always did when he took his shirt off. 

But then he realizes it _doesn’t matter_. She’s gone, Amy is still here, and he’s not fifteen anymore. He shouldn’t care about what She thinks. 

Letting out a harsh sigh, he moves on from the mirror, shuffling out into his bedroom. The heavy steam made his head foggy in the shower, and he wonders if it attached itself to him because he suddenly has a hard time thinking. 

Amy looks up from her spot on the bed, and her eyes dart behind him before going back to her phone. “You were in there for a while. Going for the world-record water bill?” 

He jolts, suddenly realizing just how swampy the bathroom was compared to their bedroom, and rubs his hands on the damp towel clinging to his waist. “Sorry. Was dirty.” 

Choosing to ignore the way her eyebrow raises at that, he makes his way over to the closet, thumbing through the shirts hanging up. Red, green, yellow, red, red, blue, red. The colors all blur together to him, and he lets out a small whine in frustration. Why can’t he think? 

Amy shifts behind him, and something about the sound of her jeans on the bed sheets sends alarm bells off in his head. It’s all he can think about, and the vague sense of panic that’s quickly rising in his throat clears out the sticky cobwebs in his head from before. 

_”Fuck, you look so nice under me like this.”_

Amy shifts again, and nausea swells within him. “Stop. Please,” he begs. It’s hard to focus on anything, and he’s not even sure if he spoke out loud until Amy replies. 

“Stop what?” She shifts again, and Mark chokes back a sob. Why is he reacting like this? What’s so horrible about jeans on a bed? 

“Doing that. That noise.” He bites his lip, and the pain grounds him. Clears away the fog. “Your jeans on the bed.” 

A silence hangs between them, and Amy hums. “Okay. I’m changing, stay turned around.” There’s a squeak of bedsprings, and then a solid minute of rustling before she speaks again. “I’m good now.” 

When he turns, Amy is wearing the soft pink shorts again, and something loosens in his chest. “I like those shorts,” he murmurs, “they’re nice.” 

She smiles, and it’s really no surprise when he feels his mouth move too because her smiles have always been so infectious. “You didn’t seem to like them when you tried to take them off me the other day.” And then he knows he’s fucked because his smile falls and Amy’s does, too. 

“I - I didn’t want. To take them off of you.” Amy’s face falls even further, if that’s even possible, and he backtracks, “not because I don’t think you’re pretty! I just - didn’t want to do that. Sorry I made you uncomfortable.” 

Mark looks up at her - when did he start looking at the floor? - and flinches at her expression. He doesn’t register much other than how _upset_ she looks, and before he can even think he’s reaching out and sitting on the bed next to her, resting a hand on her thigh. 

Amy moves away from him, carefully picking up his hand and resting it on the bed beside them. She runs a hand through her hair, and Mark watches the way the light bounces off it. “You - didn’t make me uncomfortable,” she starts, jerkily. “Why did you try to… initiate if you -” eyes widening, she finally looks back up at him, face scrunched up like she was figuring out a puzzle. “Were you serious about proving you weren’t tired?” 

A string on the duvet catches his eye, and he picks at it absent-mindedly. It helps distract him from how intense Amy’s gaze is. “Yeah.” The string breaks, and he bounces slightly on the bed. “Didn’t want you to think I was mad at you or something.” 

“I’m not going to get mad at you if you don’t have sex with me, Mark,” Amy hisses, and she must see the way he shrinks back because her next words are soft. “Why did you - do you think that?” 

Mark just shrugs again, unable to come up with a coherent response. _Because my past partner forced me to do things for her if I was tired? Because her reaction to me being tired was worse than just going along with her? Because I’m reminded of her all the time now and I have no idea why?_ Instead of saying any of those, though, he just shakes his head. “I don’t know.” 

Her hands are soft as they rest on his arm, and Mark can’t help but to lean into the touch. “Okay,” she whispers, giving him a small smile. He doesn’t even care that it’s fake. “You don’t have to tell me right now.” 

He just nods, pushing any and all thoughts of this conversation, the fogginess in his head, and why the fuck he reacted like that to the sound of jeans against his bed to the back of his mind and moves over to his closet to continue getting dressed.

═ ═ ═ ╰☆╮ ═ ═ ═

Mark stumbles over, barely catching himself on the side of the tree. His foot aches from where it made contact with the rough bark, and frankly the rest of him isn’t that far behind. “Ouch, fuck, owie,” he hisses, inspecting his palm for any damage.

Ethan stops beside him, giggling madly. “O-oh my gosh, are you okay?” Even though he looks like a maniac with how hard he’s laughing, Mark still knows that he means it. 

“Yeah,” he groans, playing it up for the camera. “I’ll be fine.” The burning in his hand and foot has yet to go away, but he jumps up to grab the tree branch anyway.

They were filming another Unus Annus video - something about climbing trees? At least, that’s what it had started as. Now it was more akin to “who can act the most reckless while on a tree?” 

Mark was currently taking the cake by trying to jump from the tree to his roof. 

Ethan pulls a face, and looks from the tree to him. “What if I… boosted you up?” He circles the tree once, and then nods. “Yeah, grab onto the branch and I’ll push you.” 

Not having a better idea, Mark complies, jumping up again. When he finally manages to grab onto the branch he makes some stupid quip, but he can’t remember what he said because suddenly Ethan is right behind him and all Mark can hear is the way Ethan’s jeans swish against each other. 

Before he can even process what’s going on, he feels his friend’s hands on the backs of his thighs, and suddenly the fog that settled in his brain before comes back full force. 

The weirdest part is that he’s pretty sure Ethan has let go by now, but he can _still_ feel hands where they definitely should _not_ be. 

At some point he must’ve let go of the branch because he can feel the ground beneath him, and he can feel the throbbing in his ankle that wasn’t there before, albeit distantly, and he can feel so many things at once he wonders how is brain isn’t overloading, and then he realizes it kind of is. So he focuses on small things, like how Amy might be talking, but he isn’t quite sure, and how he can feel the way the sunlight beats down on him. 

But most importantly he focuses on how he can still feel phantom hands crawling along the insides of his thighs. 

And with the phantom hands come a few memories. The first thing he remembers is thinking a lot. Mostly _no, no, no, please, don’t -_ , with the occasional _this is wrong I don’t want this_ , and it makes him kind of want to throw up. 

So he does. 

And then he remembers throwing up into a toilet in a shady motel in the middle of nowhere and he grabs at his shins so hard he swears there’s going to be marks. 

He’s pretty sure Amy is still talking, but he can’t find the will to listen. Everything feels like he’s underwater and he’s sure if he opens his mouth to speak hundreds of gallons of it will pour into his lungs, choking him from the inside. 

Then Ethan touches him again, gently bringing his hand up to the younger boy’s chest, and he’s grateful that their roles aren’t switched. He doesn’t want Ethan to touch his chest right now. He doesn’t want _anyone_ to touch his chest but the hands don’t seem to care. 

“Breathe,” someone says, and he _tries_ but it’s _so_ hard and he doesn’t want to drown so he just shakes his head and hopes they understand. They just repeat the command, though, so Mark guesses he’s out of luck. 

Finally, he manages to get his breathing somewhat back to normal, and the fog in his head and water in his lungs recedes, just a little. He’s able to recognize who’s talking, at least, so he counts that as being okay. 

Ethan makes eye-contact with him, and the concern there is so palpable that Mark can’t stop himself from shying away and averting his gaze to the puddle of puke on the ground. 

“Ew,” he mumbles, and pretends to ignore the way Ethan’s grip around his wrist tightens. “Sorry.” 

Amy shakes her head - when did she get here? - and squats down next to them. If she’s over here, then is the camera still running? Did it catch all of Mark’s freak-out or did she turn it off as soon as he dropped? 

“Don’t be sorry, you’re fine.” She finally says, and Mark instinctively tracks her hand as she places it on the ground to steady herself. Neither Ethan nor Amy comment on it. “Let’s go inside. We can finish this up later.” 

They both stand, and because Ethan still hasn’t seemed to want to let go of his wrist - or hand, now, seeing as he is currently intertwining their fingers - Mark is pulled up with them. There’s probably a metaphor to be made in that. 

Amy gently nudges aside the dogs as they get inside, and gestures for Ethan and Mark to sit on the couch before making her way to the kitchen. She brings back water bottles for all of them, and the ice-cold condensation dripping onto his hand brings him back to reality just a little bit more. 

Ethan clears his throat, and Mark looks at the wall just to the left of him. It’s as close as he’s willing to get to eye-contact for now. “So… Are we going to. Talk about that?” 

When no one else answers, he realizes the question is for him, because of _course_ it is, he’s the one who had a panic attack while filming, and _then_ Mark realizes he doesn’t know how to answer. 

It’s… obviously stressful. For _all_ of them when he keeps breaking down like this. He can see it in the way Amy gives him a little hopeful glance when they go to bed, only for him to turn away from her a moment later. He can see it in the way Ethan treads more carefully around him now, holding back jokes and banter that would’ve normally been acceptable for them. Hell, he can even see it in his _job_ , where, just like today, he has to keep postponing filming because something reminded him just a little _too_ much of Her and he had to have a good cry about it. They deserve an answer.

But then he realizes how much he could lose if he tells them. They don’t know he’s broken yet - they don’t know about how dirty, how disgusting he is for letting her walk all over him like that. If they know that he let her do that - that he so _obviously_ wanted it and wanted her like that and didn’t say no when he should’ve - well. Mark isn’t sure what he’d do then. And that’s not even counting what happened today. How it was a sign something _worse_ had happened - something not over a webcam or text. 

Ethan’s hand squeezes his from where their fingers are still intertwined, and Amy gives him that same fond look that always leaves him melting, and Mark decides that he can’t lose them. Not like this. 

So he lies, just like he always does. And they move on, just like they always do. 

Even if it hurts. Even if he desperately wants to unleash the dirty little secret he’s kept close to his chest for years. They move on, and Mark feels alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aha i'm straight-up Not Vibing  
> anyWay,, thank you guys so much for all of the sweet comments 🥺🥺  
> i was honestly a little scared to post this fic considering the subject matter, and it makes me. Really Happy to know that y'all are enjoying it <33 i wish i could. give all of you A Hug (or high five depending on your level of comfort)


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: self-harm, graphic depictions of said self-harm, Heavily implied/stated past rape (more so than usual)

_”Come on,” she whispered, fingers trailing along his waistband, “you know you want this.”_

_He shook his head, too overwhelmed by everything happening to push her off. “Wait - no - don’t. I don’t -” He couldn’t even finish his sentence before she put a hand over his mouth, shushing him with a smirk._

_“You’re a big boy now, yeah?”_

_Mark wanted to say no, he wanted so badly to push her off and go home, to see his mom and curl up under the blankets with her and be_ safe _\- but he was there. Alone with his “girlfriend” three days after his birthday with no way out._

_He should’ve just knocked her to the ground. He could have probably done it._

_But then she touched him again and his nerves were so fried he couldn’t think about that anymore. “Sixteen years old, coming out here all alone. You know you want it - all boys do.” The pants were dragged down, and the boxers followed._

_Fuck, why didn’t he push her off?_

_Her hand reached out to grab his face, and then suddenly he was in the same apartment he lived in at twenty-three._

_The position never changed, though._

_The same woman (if a half-decade older) grabbed his chin, forcing him to lean against the headboard as she moved to his pants. “You came back to me,” she muttered. Her face was so close to his legs - he could’ve just kneed her and ran. He could’ve escaped. “I told you you wanted it. You came back.”_

_He shook his head no, but it was futile. He_ did _go back. Seventeen-year-old him had escaped but his twenty-one-year-old self had gone back and now he was paying for it. Living without pain just felt too wrong._

 _“You’ll never truly leave me. You’re stuck with me forever.” Mark started crying, then. She was right._

He sits up quickly, barely catching himself from screaming in his sleep and startling Amy awake. It’s the third time this week, and he runs a shaky hand through his hair. Nightmares like this are getting much too common. 

The bed creaks as he leaves it, but the dogs stay put, already used to his frequent walks at night. Sometimes they join him as he floats around the house, but it seems like tonight he’s stuck with his own company. That’s fine, he doesn’t really want anyone to see him like he is anyway. Walking around the house aimlessly, touching the walls just to remind himself that they’re real. It’s something he wants to keep to himself.

Once he finally stops pacing, Mark stops and finds himself in the living room. His eyes are adjusted to the dark already, so it’s easy to make out the shapes of the painting on the wall, and he lets his gaze unfocus as he thinks about the dream he had. 

She was right, wasn’t she? He was never going to escape her. It had been almost six years since the last time he saw her, and he was still falling apart at the seams. 

He runs his hand down his side absent-mindedly, and even his own touch makes him want to vomit. She’s all over him. Inside of him. His body isn’t his own, and he’s not sure if it ever was.

So instead, he thinks about the end of his relationship with her. By then, most people knew it was at least toxic, so finding a place of his own was met with nothing but encouraging words and kind gifts. Mark’s grateful for that - grateful for his friends’ support - but that’s not what he’s truly thinking about. 

He’s thinking about the night his mom held him, just like he wanted her to all those years ago, and told him that all of his cells would replace themselves in seven years. How it would be nice to finally have something she didn’t touch, and that he just had to hold out until then. 

Logically, it didn’t make sense. But wouldn’t it be nice? To have a body she had never laid her hands on? 

The wall is cold as he leans against it, and he runs his fingers along a crack, watching the paint around it flake off and fall to the floor. 

He couldn’t fast-forward a year to see the completely-new body, but maybe he could accelerate the rate at which the cells died and replenished themselves. Maybe they just needed a little self-intervention.

And, yes, he _knows_ self-harm is a bad idea, but so was seeing her again, so his track record is already not the greatest. Besides, he’s an adult. He can handle himself. 

With a new purpose in his step, he heads for the kitchen, looking for the knife they use the least in cooking. He’s not sure what else to use, so he’ll just have to wash it thoroughly for now. It glints in the moonlight and a strange feeling overtakes him. The same numbness he’s felt for weeks now, apprehension, and a little bit of excitement. 

Mark decides he likes it. 

Once he makes it there, the bathroom tile is cold against his legs as he slumps down, and when he shivers he can’t tell if it’s to warm himself up or out of disgust for this whole night. He quickly sheds his shorts and boxers, squeezing his eyes shut to keep out the memories, and brings the knife down on his skin. 

Is he really about to do this?

And then he remembers how her voice sounded when she was on top of him and decides that, yes, he is. He wants her _gone_

The cuts start slow, experimental, but he quickly finds what works - what draws the most blood - and repeats that until there’s a small puddle on the floor and he can only see blood on the inside of his thighs. 

It’s soothing for a second. Watching the red drip out of him and imagining it’s her leaving his body. 

But then he shifts and the cuts burn and reality comes crashing down on him. 

“Fuck. Oh, _fuck!_ ” 

The slowing stream comes back in waves as he stands up and moves around the bathroom, locking the door (was he _trying_ to worry Amy?) and looking for a way to hide the mess, but he doesn’t notice in his frenzy.

Mark makes quick working of cleaning up the floor, but a few of the deeper cuts on his legs won’t stop _bleeding_ and it’s sending him into a panic. What if he can’t bandage them? What if Amy sees and breaks up with him because he’s so obviously unhinged and then he’s left alone with the knowledge that She still managed to ruin his life like she promised? 

The thought makes him gag, and he digs through the bathroom cabinets with a new fervor. 

Finally, finally he finds a dented package of bandages shoved to the back of the drawer and pulls them out, smiling wobbly at the package. He tears a couple open and places them over the still-bleeding cuts, and just _hopes_ that the others will stay closed. 

Throwing away a dozen band-aid wrappers would be extremely suspicious, especially with how odd he’s been acting lately. 

But now that he’s bandaged and no longer bleeding, the adrenaline wears off and he slumps against the wall again, sucking in a deep breath through his nose. 

Did he really just do that? Did he just… self-harm? He shifts again, and the slight ache in his thighs tells him that, yes, he did. He did just do that, and now he can no longer even pretend that he’s fine. 

He tries to ignore how quiet his mind is now, or how much he liked watching the blood drip out of him, and instead tries to be perturbed at the thought of hurting himself, like he _should_ be. 

It doesn’t work very well. 

The knife glints up at him from the floor, and he quickly yanks up his shorts and leaves the bathroom. 

It’s still dark out when he exits, thankfully, so he slows down his pace in favor of staying quiet. Amy won’t be waking up any time soon unless he does something stupid, so he has plenty of time to wash his blood off the knife. 

It takes ages with the barely-trickling water, but Mark doesn’t mind. It gives him something to focus on other than the burning in his thighs. 

Finally, he feels satisfied enough to put it away, but stops short when he sees a few cuts peeking out from beyond the hem of his pajamas. 

How is he going to hide this? 

Quietly, he shuffles back to his own room, shucking off his shorts and pulling on a random pair of pants. This will work for now, but what is he going to do if they have to wear shorter shorts for a video again? Or if Amy wants to go _there?_

Just as he’s about to pick out an outfit for the day that will hide his legs, Amy’s alarm goes off, startling him badly enough that he chucks the pants behind him, onto the bed. 

“What the fuck…?” He hears Amy mumble. “What - why?” 

“Sorry!” His heart is racing now, and he hopes she’s too sleepy to pick up on the trembling in his hands. “The alarm scared me, I’m sorry.” He gingerly picks up the pants, bringing them back over to his small pile of clothes. “How’d you, uh, sleep?” 

“Not well enough, apparently,” she mumbles, rolling back over into bed. “I still feel tired.” 

“You could probably sleep in for a little longer.” It would give him an opportunity to change into the jeans he accidentally threw at her, after all. She couldn’t see his thighs if she was under the blankets. 

Amy yawns, and sits up fully. She looks beautiful, even after sleeping, and Mark can’t help the smile that appears on his face. Even when he’s at his worst his girlfriend can make him happy. “No, it’s fine. I should probably get up, anyway.” 

He hums in acknowledgement, grabbing his clothes and walking towards the bathroom in their room. “Alright then. I’ll make breakfast after I get changed.” 

She makes a small-fist pump, smiling way too brightly for 6:30 in the morning. “Yes!” He laughs, and she cocks her head in confusion. “Hey, why are you getting changed in the bathroom?” 

Fuck. “I’m just giving you privacy! Every lady deserves to get changed without weird men staring at her.” Thank god for improv. 

She snorts at that, crossing her arms. “ _That’s_ where the bar is? Holy shit.” 

“Well, _no_ , but -” he playfully throws his hands up in the air, rolling his eyes. “You know what? I’m just trying to be a gentleman, but I guess I’ll just leave then!” He makes sure she knows he’s joking before he closes the door, and quickly gets changed with shaking hands. 

That was too close. Why did he do that? Why did he give into that stupid old wives’ tale? Now he’s going to have to hide these for weeks - possibly longer. 

Taking in a deep breath, he prepares himself for the rest of the day. It’s all going to be fine. Eventually. 

Fuck, he just wants to feel normal again. Why is he getting so affected over this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa- er, uh- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
> 
> Also, i feel like i should say - don't. self-harm please. and especially not the insides of your thighs/elbows/anywhere with thin skin tissue. they're all very dangerous places
> 
> ily all ! please stay safe <3


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aha i felt like last chapter was,, a bit of a Mess and definitely didn't portray. The Topics very well, which is the exact Opposite of what i want to do here, and i'm truly sorry for that. i gave into the ~drama~ and ~angst~ of self-harm, and i didn't take enough time to properly depict it, which is Really Stinky Of Me. this chapter is mostly just an excuse for me to explain things a little better (hopefully), so aside from this, i won't be touching on the topic much more

“Hey, Earth to Mark!” Ethan’s jab jerks him out of his thoughts, and he blinks up at the other man slowly. He can’t quite remember what he was just thinking about, or what Ethan was trying to tell him, so he just stares, unsure of what to say. 

“Are you good?” Ethan scratches the back of his neck - a nervous tic Mark’s picked up on over the course of Unus Annus - and shifts his weight. He looks a little annoyed, but he hasn’t said anything outright, so Mark decides to ignore it. He’ll say something if it’s truly bothering him. “You’ve been zoning out all day, man.” 

Instead of answering right away, Mark just shrugs. He’s _not_ okay - as evidenced by the soreness of his thighs - and he doesn’t think he even has the energy to pretend like he is. 

God, why did he do that?

“I - I’m just tired,” he murmurs. The half-truth leaves a bitter taste on his tongue, but he can’t just _tell_ them about what he did that morning. They’d think he was crazy. (And maybe he was, but figuring that out wasn’t even _close_ to a priority right now.) It’s not even a lie - he _is_ tired - but it’s certainly not the only reason he’s a little slower today. So… no harm no foul?

Ethan looks him over, and before he can ask the inevitable _”are you okay?”_ Mark cuts him off. “I stayed up pretty late last night.” It’s still not technically a lie, even if the words sit wrong in his mouth.

“Yeah, I can - I can see that.” Ethan laughs, but there’s still a pang of uncertainty there. A gentle nudge to test the waters. Mark forces out a laugh with him, and his friend softens. “Was mario kart just too addicting or something?” 

“Just trying to get better than you, man. You know how it is.” He playfully flexes his muscles, spinning around to show the camera. “Not that I’m not already better than you, but it doesn’t hurt to practice.” 

“Sure, buddy, whatever you say.” Ethan snorts, and pulls out a pair of scissors. The overhead light glints off the blade, and Mark sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth.

“What’re those for?” 

Amy facepalms at the same time as Ethan makes an absurd gurgling noise in the back of his throat. “For… the boxes? Right in front of you?” He gestures to said boxes pointedly, smiling in disbelief. 

“Oh, shit, yeah.” He grabs for the box closest to him, reaching for the scissors. “Sorry.” 

Ethan moves to hand him the scissors, but pulls them back at the last second. “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem pretty spacey.” Putting on a small smile for the video, he pulls the scissors back even farther. “I’m not sure I should trust you with these.” 

_You really shouldn’t,_ he wanted to say, but bites his tongue and grabs the scissors instead

Honestly, he didn’t even understand why he did it. It was a stupid late-night thought fueled by his anger and disgust at what had happened, but that didn’t mean he needed to _follow through_ with it. He was just - tired. Tired of feeling upset over something he couldn’t control or change, and he needed to fix it. 

But why hurt himself like that? When he had never even considered it that seriously before? 

The cuts hadn’t even _hurt_ , really. Sure, they stung when he needed to clean them, but after a few seconds of pain nothing else happened. Wasn’t that what people were addicted to? The pain? 

Watching himself bleed was meditative, and the thought of new replacing the old filled him with a strange sense of glee, but… that couldn’t be related. And it certainly didn’t make him want to do it again. 

Besides, the clean-up was hell anyway. He couldn’t do it again even if he wanted to. 

Which he didn’t. 

In his distracted state, the scissors slip from his hands and he jerks away. “Shit!” 

Amy jumps from behind the camera, and Ethan whips around to look at him. How embarrassing. Wilting under their stares, he picks the scissors back up, jabbing them back into the tape on the box. 

“Dude, you’re _really_ out of it.” The younger man murmurs, eyeing him carefully. “We can take a break -” 

“Not again.” Mark hisses, tearing the box the rest of the way open. They had already had to stop filming for his stupid problems one too many times, and he wasn’t keen on adding to that number. “It’s fine, I’m just tired. We’ve worked through worse before.” 

Amy and Ethan share a glance, talking in silence, before Ethan speaks again. “Just - with how… stressed you’ve been lately, I’m not sure if -” 

“I’m fucking fine!” Mark snaps. His friend flinches backwards, and instantly regret crashes over him, weighing heavy on his chest. “Wait - no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap like that, shit.” 

Amy turns off the camera, and Mark glances over at her. Why did she turn it off? Were they finally sick of him? Had he managed to push them to the point where whatever they were going to do needed to be off-camera? 

But then he looks at Ethan and stops, because - these were his _friends_ \- the people he cared the most about who would never hurt him - and he just snapped at one of them. 

A thick silence hangs in the room, and Mark is about to start word-vomiting until Amy steps out from behind the tripod. “We need to talk about this." She says, and Ethan nods quickly in agreement. Left with no choice, Mark just watches as Amy sits down across from him. 

After a minute of silence, he realizes that he is supposed to start, and clenches his hands in the fabric of his pants to ease the sudden anxiety bubbling up his throat. He’s talked about it before - to millions of people, in fact - but there’s something more intimate about this, more terrifying about opening up to people he cares about, rather than strangers on the internet. Running away and curling up in his bed seems like a very appealing option right now, but he knows they deserve _something_. So, he swallows his worries and talks. “I’m not sure I can tell you everything. But it’s not you two, and I’m so sorry you’re getting the brunt of this.” 

“That’s okay,” Ethan said. He stretches out a hand for Mark to hold, and the older man takes it carefully. Amy nods along at the sentiment, and though he’s glad she’s here he’s so grateful that she doesn’t reach for him. The burning heat of Ethan’s hand against his is already bright and distracting - he’s not sure he could handle both of them. 

“Um. I don’t know why this is so hard, sorry. I’ve talked about it before." His free hand goes to pick at the ground, and then his pants when he finds nothing there. This is supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to come out in a jumble, with tears and bittersweet smiles and hugs, especially because they already know who he’s talking about, but he can’t _do_ any of that right now. He just feels - numb. Detached. A little frustrated that he can’t find the words to say. “Do you remember the, uh… boyfriend video! The how to be a bad boyfriend video. I talked about her, then.” 

Amy’s face brightens in recognition, and then falls again when she realizes what he means. “Her as in -” 

“Please don’t say her name!” He squeezes his eyes shut, taking in a deep breath to ground himself. You’d think after being apart so long he could stand to hear her _name_. “But - yeah. Her.” 

Ethan tilts his head, but a look from Amy quickly catches him up to speed. “ _Oh._ What’s going on? Did she contact you or something? I’ll kick her ass for you.” 

And, gods, Mark kind of wants to laugh at that. But he knows it would just come out as more of a choked-up sob, so he settles for shaking his head solemnly. “No, and that’s the problem. I’m - thinking about her more and I don’t know _why_. I was fine. I’m supposed to be fine.” He takes his hand out of Ethan’s and rubs it on his jeans to get rid of the feeling of skin on his. It never goes away. 

Amy’s hand twitches by her side, and Mark’s eyes dart towards it. “You don’t have to be. That kind of thing is traumatic for anybody. It’s alright that you’re still hurting.” 

“Yeah,” Ethan chimes in. He had retracted his hand awkwardly, and now it was picking at the cuff of his pants, mirroring Mark. “Most people never really get over that.” 

“But that’s not - that’s not the _point_. I was fine, and now I’m not -” 

“Well you obviously weren’t fine if you’re still thinking about her.” Amy snaps. She has the decency to seem surprised at herself, and ducks her head quickly. “Sorry - I don’t like her very much.” 

Mark _wants_ to let it go - he knows Amy meant it with the best intentions - but something about it rubs him the wrong way and he just can’t stop himself from snapping back. “Don’t tell me when I am or am not fine. I can decide that for myself. And it’s _really_ hard to talk about this when I keep getting interrupted.” 

Amy wilts at his retort, and he immediately feels awful. “I’m sorry, I know you care. I just -” He lets out a heavy breath and sits back on his hands. 

How is he supposed to say this? To admit that he’s still letting her get to him, even when he’s openly talked about moving on and realizing that what she did was horrible? Hell, if he can’t even say that then how is he supposed to tell them about how he can feel her all the time - remembering events that he had previously forgotten about - and move on? 

He can’t even admit that to himself.

“I’m. Remembering a lot of what she did to me,” he starts. It’s vague enough that he can tell they have questions, but they don’t make any moves to fill the silence and Mark counts that as a win. “She… I’ve told you about her hitting me. It’s partly that.” 

He sees Amy wince out of the corner of his eye, and he can’t tell how he feels about it. On one hand, he knows it’s because she cares. But on the other, it’s much too close to pity for his liking. 

“Uh, she - I -” The words clog in his throat once more, and he bites his lip in frustration. Then, he thinks about what She would say about it and pulls his knees up to his chest to hide himself from view. 

It’s pathetic, he knows. No one is looking at him like _that_ , especially not now. But… It’s ingrained into him. To always be on display, ready to please whenever. So he revels in the small modicum of comfort he gets from hiding and curls around himself tighter. 

Ethan shuffles, and once Mark’s eyes start to track his movements he moves slower, taking off his sweatshirt with careful hands. “Do you want my hoodie?” He asks, holding it out. “It’s not as big as yours are, but…” 

Too tired to come up with a reason to decline, Mark nods gratefully, pulling on the hoodie as quickly as he can. Even though it’s a little smaller than he’s used to, it’s warm, and it smells like Ethan which just makes it _that_ more comfortable and he curls up again. 

“Thanks. What was I saying?” He takes a moment to himself, too distracted by the warmth of the hoodie to think properly. There’s something about the way Ethan just anticipated what he wanted - already two steps ahead of him and giving up something of his just to make Mark comfortable that has him a little misty-eyed. Pulling the collar up to his nose, he takes a small breath in and rubs the soft fabric over his face. 

“I just - can’t get over it for some reason. It’s really bad right now and I don’t know why.” He shifts, feeling the soft fabric against his skin, and it feels odd to have something from just Ethan so he reaches for Amy’s hand, too. “Sorry, you’ve - probably already caught onto that.” 

“We had our suspicions,” Amy affirms, and squeezes his hand, “but we wanted to know from you.” 

He looks between the two of them, and can't find it in himself to be mad that they were talking behind his back. Of course they were - they cared about him and he was acting wildly out of character. Hell, he'd talk about someone else like that if it meant he could help them.

"Did you ever truly work through it?" Ethan asks. His face is scrunched up like he's trying to solve a problem, and Mark softens a little at that. "I mean, if you just - ignore it, eventually it's going to come up somehow." 

"Somewhat. My mom put me in therapy. It got worse and better."

In truth, the last time he had seen a therapist was when he was seventeen and he ended up lying his way out of it, anyway, but they didn't need to know that.

Ethan just nods like he completely understands. "Yeah, it does that. So why'd you stop?"

"I thought I was better."

"Do you want to go back?" 

Mark pauses at that, and takes a minute to think it over. Does he? 

He probably needs to. The cuts on his thighs throb when he shifts, and he knows that he really _should_ say yes. 

But then he remembers how all she had wanted to talk about was how his "promiscuous behavior" was a cry for attention whenever he brought up the abuse he endured, and he knows he can't go through that again, either. 

"I'm not sure if I can. I can't handle someone not believing me again." 

Amy gasps, and her face darkens in anger. "Not believing you? Your therapist didn't believe she hit you?" 

Mark nods, and before he can even think about it he keeps going. “It wasn't just the hitting, though.” Both of them look at him curiously, but stay silent, waiting for an answer. 

And he was so prepared to give them one, too. 

But then he remembers the hoodie he's wearing and _why_ he's wearing it and it's too much all at once. 

Pulling his hands back, he wraps his arms around himself and stares resolutely at the ground. They deserve an explanation - he _knows_ that, but the idea of actually saying that out loud is terrifying and he can't bring himself to say anything. 

He risks a glance up at them and immediately regrets it. They both look so patient and understanding. It's too much - he needs to leave, run away and forget about this just like he's always done.

"Uh - I can't talk about this anymore," he stutters out. "It's - it's too much, I need to go. I'm sorry." 

After some small back and forth, they realize that Mark is not going to back down, and let him leave out the front door with the dogs. 

"I'm worried." Ethan hums. It's not new, they've both been worried for weeks now, but Amy understands what he means. 

Everything is piecing together in a very concerning puzzle, and she's not so sure it's just a small depressive episode anymore.

Ethan shakes his head in the silence. "He's going to be okay. We'll help him." 

"We'll try," she says instead, and pointedly looks away from the look Ethan gives her. "We'll try to help him." 

"Yeah. We'll try."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway,, maybe one of these days i'll actually write a chapter with a level head so it doesn't come out as Word Vomit™ (it's not likely tho sorry 😔🤙)


	6. Six

Amy had her suspicious, when it came to Mark. 

She had seen it in her friends when they came home from parties, drunk and alone. She had seen it when they had just gotten out of a toxic relationship. On billboards and PSAs and pamphlets - she had seen it _everywhere_.

But she never expected to see it in Mark. 

In hindsight, she probably should have expected it. How he was acting - it wasn't anything _new_. Amy was used to waking up in the middle of the night with an empty space in the bed beside her, or calming down the man from a panic attack after she had brushed against his waist. 

She just - never put it together like _that_ before. 

And she still wasn't, not really. Amy hadn't let herself think about it after the thought first crossed her mind - it wasn't her place, Mark would come to her when he was ready, every excuse she could think of to keep herself from prying.

The bed dips beside her, and Amy snaps her eyes shut. Mark waves a hand in front of her face, she can tell by the small draft he creates, and gets up from the bed. 

He's been doing this almost every night. Is it really too much to think that she might be concerned? 

A soft click signifies that he left the room, and she slowly opens her eyes again. She's not looking at anything - the wall has stayed the same for the past four hours - but it's easier, somehow, to think with her eyes open. 

Would it really be awful of her to pry? It was for Mark's own good, after all. 

But then the image of him crying on the floor floats across her vision, and she decides that, yeah, maybe invading his privacy _isn't_ the best thing right now. Even if she's scared (gods, she's so scared). 

Mark comes back three hours later, when she's drifting between sleep and wakefulness, and settles down beside her. His hand comes to rest on her upper arm, and Amy almost cries. This is the most he's touched her in _days_. 

With the warm weight of his hand on her and the steady sound of their breathing, she falls asleep. 

"Good morning," Mark murmurs, gently shaking her arm. She lets out an inhuman noise - something between a groan and a gurgle - and he laughs. "Didn't know I was sleeping next to Ethan." 

"Haha," she deadpans, rolling over to face him. The sheets are the perfect mix of warm and cool, and she can't resist the urge to snuggle into them. "Hi." 

"Hi? You can try to distract me by being adorable all you want, but we have to get up." The hand on her shoulder moves to running up and down the length of her arm, and she lets herself relax into it.

"No we don't. We could stay here forever. It's comfy." 

It's hard to imagine that the person she was thinking about the night before is the same one staring at her now. 

Mark smiles bittersweetly, and Amy feels like she's missing something. "I know, I know. I wish we could stay here, too."

She wants to play along with whatever this weird hidden-messages game is, but she doesn't even know where to start. So, she does the next best thing and moves to sit up. "Alright, I'm up. Whaddya want?" 

He sits up, too, and fiddles with the hem of the blanket. "We have to film today." 

"Ew," she mutters, but the disgust is diluted by the fact that she's standing up, out of the bed. "Do we have to?" 

"Unfortunately." 

Shaking her head sadly, Amy just grabs her clothes and begins to get changed. Mark, of course, quickly flees to the bathroom. 

It's another hour before Ethan joins them - gleefully taunting them about his extra thirty minutes of sleep as he digs into the cereal they keep for him. 

"Maybe if you actually ate breakfast at your own house you'd have to get up earlier," Amy shoots back, and Ethan's mouth is conveniently too full to reply to that.

When they're done, Mark takes the plates to the sink, and the two work on unpacking the cameras. 

"What's up with Mark?" Ethan asks, fiddling with the zipper of a case. "He seems… happier today? Which is - yikes to say, but -"

Knowing he's going to keep talking until he goes hoarse, Amy gently cuts him off. "I know what you mean. Honestly, I don't know." She thinks back to that morning - how easily Mark had touched her, and realizes that Ethan's _right_ \- he was being weird, and it's even worse that something normal for him a month ago is odd now. "He is acting strange. Maybe he just needed to cry?"

A small part of her says that if that's all it was, he would've been back to normal weeks ago. She ignores that part. 

"I don't know… I just - hope he's not trying to, like, hide something? If that makes sense." 

"What would he be trying to hide?" 

Ethan runs a hand through his hair. The camera equipment is lying on the floor, forgotten, but neither of them care. "I don't know, that's the thing. I'm just worried. It's weird that him being 'normal' is worrying, isn't it?"

"Probably, but I know what you mean." Her thoughts from the night before cross her mind again, and she _knows_ she said she'd stop prying, but it seems like a good moment to bring it up, so she opens her mouth - 

And then Mark walks in. Because of _course_ he does, the universe is a dramatic bitch. 

To make matters worse, he's smiling tightly, and Amy knows he heard them. Shoot, how long had he been done with the dishes? He wouldn't be cleaning three plates for _that_ long, after all. She should've thought of that.

"Come on, what's taking you two so long?" he teases, reaching for the case closest to him. Ethan and Amy share a look at the gentle dismissal, thinking the same thing - if Mark wasn't going to talk about it, then they weren't either.

So Ethan makes some stupid joke about Amy cheating on him instead, and they spend the next few minutes unpacking in amiable silence. 

The rest of filming goes by quickly. Everything is normal - enough to make her feel downright stupid for her suspicions - and Amy hates that worry twists uncomfortably in her gut. 

Once everything's packed up, Mark leaves to go the bathroom, and she and Ethan are left alone again, for the second time that day. 

If it wasn't ridiculous, she would think it was done on purpose. 

"About earlier," Amy starts, because the thought never really left her mind, even after filming, "um - I have an idea, but I don't know if…" She trails off, hoping he'll get her meaning, but Ethan just raises his eyebrows expectantly, and she realizes she's going to have to say all of this _out loud_ , which is so much worse than just implying it. "I don't know if it's, like, right, you know? Without asking him." 

"What is it?" 

The question catches her off-guard. It's not anything surprising on it's own, but - Amy's not sure _how_ to answer it. How do you voice something like that out loud? Something that sounded too far-fetched even to her when she first thought of it? 

"You know how he always flinches? When someone make a too-sexual joke or touches him unexpectedly?" she asks instead, still trying desperately to get it across through implication. Unfortunately, Ethan tilts his head anyway, and she lets out a small huff. She was hoping this would be easier. "I… I think something might've happened." 

"Like… Like sexually?" His voice drops, far too quiet for the silent room, and the gravity of the subject truly hits her for the first time. Fuck, if she's right, then something _did_ happen to Mark. It's one thing to suspect he's dealing with the aftermath, but it's a completely jarring other thing to think about what, exactly, caused said aftermath. 

The toilet flushes, then, and she jerks back, suddenly feeling _awful_ for talking about this without Mark. "I think maybe, yeah. But - I don't know. Should we bring it up?" 

Ethan's face scrunches up, and he worries his bottom lip between his teeth. She tries not to look. "He'd come to us, right?" 

_Yes,_ Amy starts to say, until she realizes that he _hasn't_ come to them, and he might not ever. Can they risk waiting for Mark will come to them and get help, or take a chance on the much more likely option of him bottling it up until he shatters? It's impossible to know - especially with how completely different he'd been acting lately, and she bites her thumbnail in frustration. "I don't know, Eth. I want him to." 

Knowing their options just as well as Amy does, Ethan just hums and sits back on his hands.

Her head darts to the doorway when Mark walks in, and she gives him a small smile she hopes he can't see through. "Hey, what took you so long?" 

"Didn't want to interrupt whatever lengthy discussion you two were having," he shrugs. There's no malice in his words, but the guilt curdling inside her twists them into something angry and pointed, and she breathes out a shuddering sigh. "Besides, I'm pooped." 

A high-pitched snort interrupts whatever she was going to say, and she looks over at the offender. "Ah, I see what you did there!" Ethan cheers, winking dramatically. He doesn't seem to be dealing with the same shame Amy is, and she can't tell if that's a good or bad thing. "Pooped! On the toilet! Comical genius." 

Bewildered, they both stare at him until Mark whispers a defeated "oh my god," promptly launching the three into a fit of laughter. 

"Come on," Amy finally says between small hiccups, "let's take a nap on the couch. I think we all - read: Ethan - could use it." Small happy tears pool in her eyes, and she gently wipes them away with the last few breathy chuckles. 

The younger boy just shrugs playfully at the accusation, flopping down onto the piece of furniture and flinging a blanket over himself. He looks like a mess, with his sticky-up hair and blanket burrito they all know he's going to get stuck in later, and Amy's heart warms at the sight. She sits down next to him, unable to hide the fond smile that stretches across her face. Gods, these two were going to be the death of her.

"Mark!" Ethan whines, snapping her out of her trance and making grabby hands for the older man. "C'mon, c'mon!" 

Chuckling, he sits down in the space between Ethan and Amy, throwing his arms over the back of the couch. Both of them immediately cuddle into his sides, giggling at the displeased groan Mark lets out.

There was only one braincell between them, and it seemed that right then Mark had it. 

It's easy to forget her earlier worries when she's under her boyfriend's arm and giggling with one of her best friends, but they always seem to find a way to creep back into her head. 

Her hand accidentally brushes against Mark's waist as she shifts to get comfortable, and the man jerks back, breaking the comfortable atmosphere. In the awkward silence, her and Ethan make eye contact. 

She knows he's telling her to say something, to bring it up and get the truth, but Mark was in such a good mood that she just _can't_. It'd be too cruel to drop that on him and ruin his night. 

So she shakes her head, makes some stupid quip about searching for Ethan's hand, and grabs it tightly to distract herself from the momentary fear on Mark's face. 

It ends up with a giggly Mark and her holding Ethan's (very warm, very soft) hand, so she counts it as a win. 

They'll be fine. They have to be. She can't lose this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? stress-writing because i'm stuck in the car with my family for four hours? you betcha (I'm so sorry)


	7. Seven

Mark shuffles around the kitchen quietly, searching for the k-cups he and Amy had kept moving around. When a shelf turns up empty, he tucks his finger into the groove between the cabinet door and frame, letting the wood close on the soft padding of his skin. It muffles the normal slamming sounds, and soothes some of the strange nerves weighing heavy on his shoulders. 

The wooden floor creaks under him as he walks around, and without even thinking about it he shifts his weight up into his hips and lower back, off of his feet. 

Finally, he finds the small cups and pops them carefully into the coffee maker. It makes a loud beeping, and though he’s up at a reasonable time (for once), he can’t stop the full-body shiver that runs through him. What if Amy gets mad? What if she comes in here and yells at him over a fucking _coffee maker?_

The misdirected anger that rises with that thought isn’t a surprise. Still, he’s a little shocked it’s directed at _Amy_ , of all people. 

And speak of the devil, Amy herself walks in a moment - or maybe a while? - later. “I think your coffee’s done,” she hums, picking up the mug and handing it to him on her way to the fridge. 

Mark nods and leans back against the counter, pretending to watch the trees sway in their backyard. 

She reaches a hand out to pat his shoulder, like she would’ve just a couple months ago, before she inevitably aborts the motion - and he _hates_ that - hates that she’s acting like he’s fragile. But he hates that he knows he’d shy away from the touch anyway even more. “You okay? You’re normally not this - I don’t know, pensive? In the morning.” 

The coffee burns his throat as he swallows, but it helps him stall. “Fine.” 

It’s not a lie - he _is_ fine. Maybe not good, but certainly not bad, and that’s all that matters. Even if the thought of how many half-truths he’s been giving out lately makes something inside of him curl up and die.

“...Okay.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and looks out the window with him. He wonders what she sees out there - his focus drifted long ago, and everything is a green blur to him. “Um, is there anything you wanted to do today? I got the videos edited early, so we have the whole day to ourselves.” 

Logically, Mark knows Amy isn’t suggesting what he thinks she is. He _knows_ that. But it ticks him off anyway. 

“Whatever’s fine,” he sighs, setting his cup down a little too harshly. It’s still too full, and some of the hot liquid splashes out onto his hand. It’s fine, he deserves it. 

Amy purses her lips and turns away from him. She’s frustrated - as evidenced by the way she glances away from the coffee splatter - but Mark is just far too tired to care. 

Chica barks from the other room and he jerks back into action, quickly wiping up the spill and dumping the rest of the mug out. “I’m sorry.” 

His girlfriend smiles sadly, like she knows something he doesn’t (and doesn’t _that_ just set off the alarm bells in his head?), and shrugs. “It’s fine, I get it. Bad day.” Her hand rests next to his on the marble counter - a compromise between her want to touch him and his utter revulsion at being touched right now. 

“I shouldn’t take that out on you.” 

“No, but again, I get it. At least you’re being self aware.” The dogs bark again, and she pushes away from him. “I’ll leave you be.” 

Mark’s never been so simultaneously relieved and crushed. 

His funk lasts into the next day, and he’s honestly surprised Amy hasn’t truly snapped at him yet. 

“I think we should… maybe put these two sides together?” Ethan holds up two pieces of the birdhouse they’re trying to make, smashing them together with a sound that somehow pisses Mark off like nothing else ever has before. 

He doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s trying to connect the floor to the roof. 

Amy raises her eyebrows at his silence, and somehow picking up that he’s not going to continue on with the bit zooms in on Ethan’s antics. “I... don’t think those go together, Eth.” 

Playing up his frustration, the younger boy throws the wooden slabs on the table. Mark doesn’t even care about how obvious his flinch is, or the look Ethan gives him when he scoots his chair away. It’s too much all at once and if they’re really expecting him to just deal with this like normal when he feels like he’s about to implode then… 

Well, he doesn’t know what to tell them, but he knows that his growing levels of anger and distrust can’t be leading to anything good, and they’re smack-dab in the impact zone. 

“Mark?” Ethan prods when he’s been quiet too long, “do you need to take a break?” His hands fiddle with the sleeves of his hoodie, and when he notices Mark looking he moves them on top of the table. It’s meant to soothe him, let him know there’s nothing to worry about here, but Mark’s brain just doesn’t _work_ like that, especially right now, and it only makes him panic even more.

The camera light is still blinking, and he knows they need to film today, so he shakes his head and scoots closer. The tension in his shoulders is starting to hurt. “I’m good. Let’s keep going.” 

“Mark.” Amy steps to the side of the camera - signifying she’s not filming without moving closer. There’s a crease between her eyebrows, and Mark forgets how to breathe for a second. “We need to stop - you can’t film like this.” 

He knows he’s being petty, and childish, but his anger flares and he rolls his eyes. “Yes I can! Stop just assuming you know what’s best for me - I’m an adult!” He sounds like he's sixteen again.

_”Mark, please, just -” his mom reached out for him, and he shrugged the hand away._

_“Stop it! Stop trying to go through my shit - I’m old enough to take care of myself! You don’t need to go all ‘FBI’ on me.” He yelled. It didn’t even make any sense, and he knew it was suspicious as hell - he’d never been private about his electronics before, but_ gods _he was so fucking ashamed and humiliated by what was on there. All of the photos he had taken in the harsh three a.m. light of the bathroom, silently crying his eyes out and hoping the first one was good enough so she wouldn’t ask for another. The text messages that were so explicit they made him feel disgusting even thinking about them. Just - everything on the shitty old laptop made him want to gouge his own eyes out. “I’m an adult now, treat me like one.”_

Tears pool in his eyes at the memory, and he drums his fingers on the table to get the sudden nervous energy out. “I - I’m _fine_.” 

Ethan’s eyes meet his own, and at the way the younger boy’s face softens he knows he’s being far too obvious. 

She always hated how much of a crybaby he was.

“You’re not,” Ethan murmurs. The chair makes a god-awful screeching noise as he pushes away from the table, and everyone winces. “Sorry. But - we should stop. Even if… Even if you want to keep going, I don’t want to get yelled at today.” It’s mostly a half-assed excuse, but everyone knows it has a kernel of truth in it, and that makes Mark feel _so much worse._

The anger that had been fuelling him before is slowly dissipating, and he slumps against the cool table. He feels like an empty shell - gutted from the inside out. “Yeah. You’re right.” 

Amy sets down the camera and comes to sit beside Ethan. Mark swallows down the (stupid, stupid) notion that she’s trying ot protect him - or herself - from the unstable man who gets upset at birdhouses before he can lash out and scoots away from them. 

He doesn’t trust them, right now, but he doesn’t trust himself either. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. There’s not much else to do - they’re at a standstill for now. Ethan and Amy both shift uncomfortably, and maybe at another time he’d marvel at how close they’d become - enough to mirror each other without realizing. “I’m - fuck, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole.” 

Ethan shakes his head, and focuses on the painting on the wall behind him. “‘S fine. Anger’s common, you know. It’s not - it’s not something you’re alone in.” 

And, he _is_ sorry, but Mark can never resist an opportunity to be a complete dick, so he smiles humorlessly against the table and clicks his tongue. “Yeah… Anger’s one of the basic human emotions, you know.” 

“No -” his friend furrows his brow, like he’s trying to word something _just right_ , and despite the residual irritation Mark feels, he gives him a moment. "You... when someone goes through shit, a lot of times they come out angry. That's alright."

"'Goes through shit?'"

"Yeah, like - like you know, something traumatic. Trauma can really fuck with you dude."

The clock on the wall ticks on, and Mark counts along with it. "Why are you telling me this?" 

"You're not alone," Amy interrupts. It only half-answers his question, but at least it's something. They don't seem to want to tell him anything directly nowadays, anyway. "You're… there's other people out there who've gone through what you have." 

"What _I_ have? Please at least tell me what you're talking about before you continue this therapist schtick." It's obvious to anyone that's listening he's getting defensive, but Mark doesn't care. He couldn't tell them anything - not about how gross he felt some days, or about how small things could set him off so badly he wanted to reach into his brain and yank his memories out, and especially not about what actually happened. They would leave him. 

Amy averts her gaze to Ethan, and the younger boy sighs. He takes a moment to himself and picks at an old stain on the table. Even now, the sound irritated Mark more than it should. Before he can say something, though, Ethan begins again. "We're worried about you. You can talk to us about _anything_ , big or small. We'll still be here for you." 

Ethan was telling the truth - they had stayed by him before, when he first opened up about the relationship, and continued to stay through all of the bullshit he was putting them through now. It wasn't fair to them to pretend like that hadn't happened.

But he was so scared.

The simmering anger he had shoved down comes back full-force, and Mark just. Shuts down. Feeling too much and too little all at once to deal with this. "Okay. Thanks." The chair squeals again as he stands up, and his fingers curling around the lip of the table are the only indication that he hasn't gone completely numb. "I'm going to shower. Do whatever." 

The two don't call out after him anymore. He kind of wonders if they ever will again. 

They start whispering as soon as he leaves - they must know he can hear them - but he continues on to the shower, anyway. They can do whatever.


	8. Eight

Mark watches the trees roll past the car window, blinking lazily in the late-morning sunlight. The three of them - Amy, Ethan, and him - were driving out to some mystery location he’d be let in on later, apparently, for filming, and he revels in the quiet trip away from home for once. It’s still for work, of course, but he saw an Instagram caption telling him to find happiness in the smaller things, like the drippy ice-cream with a faint “shutterstock” watermark in the actual post, so he takes what he can get. 

The two in front had been humming nonsense for the past half-hour, and at a particularly loud laugh he tunes back in, eager to find out what, exactly, was so funny. 

They’re making parodies about the dogs and chicken, it sounds like - piggybacking off of each other and the radio - and he has half a mind to record it so he can watch it again whenever he wants. Play it on repeat just to see the way their face would scrunch up in embarrassment, or tease them with the phone as they try to jump up high enough to reach his arm and rip it out of his grasp. 

He smiles fondly, probably looking a little dopey if Amy’s comments on his “sappy face” were anything to go by, and secretly thanks himself for thinking to sit in the back. 

“I knew you were chicken when you walked in,” Ethan hums, bringing Mark back to the present, out of his little daydream. He drums his fingers against the steering wheel, and it’s horribly off-beat in a way only Ethan can pull off, but Mark lets him continue in silence. “Skin so crispy sweet -”

“Crispy sweet?” Amy snorts. She kicks up against the dashboard, and he can practically see the way her eyebrow twitches up in amusement. “What chicken have you been eating?” 

Mark sees how Ethan looks at her in the rearview mirror, and his heart melts at the domesticity of it. Amy had no right to criticize _his_ “sappy face” when Ethan was looking at her like _that_ \- all gooey and doe-eyed in his own special way. “The crispy sweet kind, obviously.” 

“Watch your attitude!” Her hand darts out to smack against Ethan’s shoulder, and Mark cranes around the seat to fix her with an amused stare. “Come on, that’s no way to speak to a _lady_!”

The sentence reminds him of Her, obviously, it always fucking does, and he sits back against his seat. If his hands curl around the fabric of his jeans just a little too tightly, well, no one else was there to see it, so it’s like it never happened. 

“She’s right, Ethan,” he chastises, hoping they can’t sense the thick fog that settles in his head, trickling its way down his throat and into his lungs. “How could you be rude to my girlfriend in my own car? I thought we were _friends_.” 

Ethan clicks his tongue, but says nothing until they get to the next red light. He twists around, wincing at the pull on his muscles after sitting for so long, and stares at Mark for a solid five seconds before saying “I’m driving, bitch. My girlfriend now.”

Amy makes some joking comment about being property, but it’s lost in the loud cacophony of laughter erupting from the two boys. 

“Wh - what the fuck, Eth?” Mark gasps, once they’ve calmed down a bit, “I thought we were _cool_ man - I trusted you!” 

“You shouldn’t’ve,” is all he gets in return before Amy is intertwining her hand with Ethan’s, turning around to look at her _actual_ boyfriend with a smug smile.

“See, Mark? All the boys want me. Gonna have to do better than that to keep me!” 

“It’s my fucking car!” The three of them burst out into laughter again, and Mark turns to rest his head against the window. The biting cold of the glass helps to clear off any residual _eugh_ he had been feeling, and he closes his eyes to block out the sun. “So where are we going, anyway?” 

Amy simply hums and picks up Ethan’s phone from the center console, swiping at it for a minute before looking at him through the rearview mirror. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she says, mouth trembling under the pressure of trying to hide the grin spreading on her face, “better put your shoes on now, kiddo.” 

“Ew, do you not have your shoes on? In _my_ car?” Ethan glances at him in the rearview mirror, too, before returning his attention to the road. “You better fix that.” 

Huffing playfully, Mark slumps even further against the window, shoulder knocking painfully against the plastic interior. He doesn’t justify either of their jokes with a response, and instead crosses his arms over his chest like a petulant child. The thought of nagging them with various “are we there yet”s or “I'm hungry”s crosses his mind, but he decides he doesn’t want the bit to last all fucking day, so he bites his tongue and closes his eyes once more. 

Noting his silence, the two in the front seats start chatting once more, belting out an occasional chicken parody every so often. Mark hums as the conversation flies by, smiling sleepily as the sun warms his face and relaxing against the cool window, eventually finding a perfect balance. They’re enthusiastic enough that it makes up for his silence, and he lets himself drift off, promising himself he’ll make it up to them somehow when he wakes up.

It seems like only two seconds later when a hand is nudging his shoulder, waking him up. “Mark,” Ethan coos softly, the warm hand shaking him a little. “C’mon, we’re here.” 

Groggily, he opens his eyes. The harsh sunlight blinds him for a moment, and he groans. “Tastes like yuck. Don’t wanna get up.” 

His friend giggles, and gives him a hand up that Mark gladly takes. It’s still warm, and he can’t help the way his hand curls around it, seeking warmth in the bitter December morning. “You can sleep again soon, promise,” Ethan assures. 

The sunlight is brighter outside of the car, he finds once he actually _gets up_ , and he ducks behind the younger man, letting him act as a shade. They may be the same height, but Mark has perfected the art of slouching to stay shielded behind his taller friends. “Amy’s just getting some things cleared up with the owner and then we can come back to the car to eat lunch.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mark mumbles, frowning when Ethan moves away. Before he can think he reaches out, pulling him closer so he can rest his head on the younger man’s chest. “Don’t move. You’re my shade. And warmth. It’s so fuckin’ cold dude.” 

A weird, high-pitched giggle erupts out of Ethan then, and Mark can feel the way his hands flutter awkwardly looking for a perch. The movement is annoying, and not being able to see when fingers are going to brush against him is anxiety-inducing enough to start waking him up. 

“Stop moving so much - makin’ me nervous,” he mumbles into Ethan’s shoulder, and almost immediately the younger’s hands come to rest against Mark’s lower back. The touch sparks antsy pin-pricks against his skin, and he chokes out a “not there,” sighing in relief when Ethan moves his hands. 

“Sorry,” his arms tighten around Mark, “won’t do it again.” 

Trying to hide the growing smile on his face, the older man just shrugs. The fabric tangles in his fingers as he hugs back, and it’s somehow so _hilarious_ (or maybe he’s just sleep-drunk) that he can’t help but giggle. “‘S fine. Don’t mind much.” 

“Cool. Cool - cool beans.” Ethan’s voice sounds strained, but Mark doesn’t comment on it. He trusts him to say when he’s too uncomfortable to do something.

And - wow - that’s so _cool_ that they have that kind of trust. Where they know the other will come to them when they’re ready. He _never_ thought he’d be able to have those boundaries - that _trust_ again, and he lets himself smile fully against his friends shoulder as he hugs him harder. 

“Thanks,” he whispers. “Love you. Even though you say cool beans.” 

His friend lets out a strangled noise, and the hands that were once a soothing pressure on his back go back to fluttering. Mark mourns the loss. “Uh - thanks? You? Too?” There’s a heavy silence for a beat - too long, in Mark’s opinion - before Ethan’s hands return. “And cool beans is perfectly acceptable to say.” 

Frowning, he shifts away from Ethan, struggling to stand up straight on his own once the warmth is gone. Why was he acting so weird? Reaching out first and forcing Ethan to hug him wasn’t normal behavior - It was like he was _trying_ to make him worry. “Sorry. Just - thinking.” 

“No you’re… fine.” He can tell Ethan wants to say more, but he doesn’t press. “Uh - when d’you think Amy’s going to be back?” 

Almost as if she was listening for that very question, Amy walks out from the small building across the parking lot - something Mark probably should’ve noticed by now - waving a bundle of papers in the air with a bright smile. Once she reaches the car, she tosses the stack to Mark, who catches them easily, and pulls on an exaggerated frown. “They said no arson guys, sorry.” 

“Aw, fuckernuggets!” Ethan cries with equal mock-anguish. He pauses for a moment before realizing what he said, bursting out in laughter. “Fuckernuggets!?” 

Amy giggles, and to not raise any suspicion Mark forces a laugh out as well. He feels guilty for it, but it’s not like he didn’t find them funny, or he’s lying to them. He’s just… tired. A little guilty for making Ethan uncomfortable. 

Fortunately, they don’t seem to notice, and Ethan quickly retreats to the trunk to pull out the camera equipment. “So, can I know what we’re doing now?” 

Amy looks at him, then tilts her head and laughs like he’s a small puppy who’s just barked at his own shadow. “Mark - look at the sign.” 

So he does. It’s bright neon red, with yellow thunderbolts and comic-book effects sprouting out from the billboard. There’s an image of a baseball bat and a broken vase, and he purses his lips in thought. “Rage Room?” 

“It’s a breaking things room! Like, you go in there to specifically break things.” 

Mark nods, then pauses and double-checks the sign. “Like the one we did for Unus Annus?” 

At the words, Amy short-circuits. She glances down to the paperwork, then back to the sign, and finally over at the building. “Oh, fuck. How did I…?” 

“What’s up?” Ethan asks, carrying their large black duffel bag full of equipment and the backpack full of mic-packs and other essentials. The weight seems uncomfortable, if his weird posture is anything to go by, so Mark reaches out and takes the duffel back from him. “Did something happen?” 

“Yeah, we filmed at a place like this for Unus Annus,” Amy groans, if a bit exaggerated, and smacks a hand to her forehead. “We can’t film here.” 

Ethan groans at that, dramatically folding into himself and mirroring Amy’s face-palm. “Fuck, dude!” he whines, and Mark _immediately_ knows something is up. 

“I know. Well, we can still enjoy the time here! We just won’t film,” Amy says, and _there’s_ the final piece of the puzzle he’s been looking for - he knew Amy would never forget something like that. 

Sighing, Mark places his hands on his hips and raises an eyebrow at the two of them, both of whom are seriously over-playing the whole “distraught” bit. “Did you guys… seriously set it up so that we’d ‘accidentally’ have to spend a bit here without work?” 

Ethan gawks at the accusation, but an unimpressed stare from Mark has him looking at the ground sheepishly. “Maybe… But we weren’t sure if you -” he pauses for a moment, bites the inside of his cheek like he does when he’s thinking, then continues “ - would want to take a break off work! Didn’t know how else to get you out of the house.” 

“Yeah!” Amy agrees, a bit too quickly. “We just wanted you to take a break.” 

The obvious lie - right after another lie, no less - sparks a dull burning in his chest, and he takes a deep breath to avoid snapping at them. They just _cared_ , and even though he didn’t know the actual reason, he knew they brought him here because they thought it would help him somehow. They weren’t the type of people to plan a spontaneous trip otherwise. 

Hell, even he’d lied to them to get them on a vacation when they were working themselves to the bone before. 

“Thanks,” he mutters instead, and if they can tell he’s caught on they say nothing about it. 

Amy gives him a small smile at the same time Ethan assures him it’s no problem at all, really, they’d do anything for him anytime, and they make their way inside the building. 

The first thing he notices once he’s inside is how _loud_ it is, both visually and literally. At least five people are screaming, and even the mostly-muffled version they’re hearing outside of the rooms themselves is enough to send a shiver down his spine. 

He’s never done well with one person yelling. It’s even worse, he thinks, when there are several people doing it all around him, closing him in a cage full of anger. 

The wallpaper doesn’t make it much easier on him. It’s a vibrant, eye-straining red, obviously meant to pump up anyone who enters with enough energy to smash household objects to their heart’s content, but all it does for Mark is make him want to close his eyes and return to the car, and he averts his gaze to the concrete floor to escape the assault. 

Amy stops before an innocuous wooden door, double-checking something on the papers before opening it and stepping inside. Hesitantly, Mark follows, a little bit scared he’s going to be surrounded and swallowed whole by the angry red if he’s being honest, only to be pleasantly surprised with the drywall that meets him. 

“So, anything in here we can smash,” Ethan explains, like they hadn’t been standing in a room just like this mere months ago and revealing what, precisely, made them tick. Like Mark hadn’t gone home after seeing just how easily his friend had destroyed a printer and threatened him with the scrap metal, or Amy walking towards him with a bat, and sat in the shower until the water ran cold. 

“Alright,” he murmurs, picking up a bottle conveniently placed on a barrel to the right of him. It makes a sharp crash when he throws it at the far wall (he missed the wall, by a _lot_ but he’s rusty, okay?) and even though it sounds so, so completely different it reminds him of when She would get a little too drunk - 

Amy breaks a plank over her knee, and Mark’s snapped out of his reverie with an equal mixture of fear and admiration swirling in his heart. 

She giggles as the pieces fall to the floor, and turns to their friend. “Come on, Ethan! You haven’t smashed anything yet.”

When Mark turns to him to await his answer, he’s a little startled to find that Ethan’s already looking at him, hands hovering uneasily by his side and an indiscernible look in his eye. He can usually tell when people are staring - or even just when they give him a quick glance as he passes by - so being so completely unaware of the gaze fuels the queasy feeling that had been slowly building inside of him since they entered. “Uh, Eth?” 

“Right, yeah! Smashing.” Shaking off whatever thoughts he had in a little “Ethan dance,” he grabs a small perfume bottle and breaks it against the concrete. “Violence!” 

“Violence!” Amy choruses, already grabbing for another bottle. 

They continue on like that - each smashing small items with a cheer or angry name drop (Amy’s still not over the F her third grade science teacher, Ms. Broad, gave her), and eventually Mark calms down as the rhythm is established. 

It’s even fun, just a little bit, to break a glass vase and pretending it was one of Her stupid collectibles. Or even tossing a small paperweight back and forth with Ethan before one of them eventually fumbled it, even though they’re still technically arguing over who. 

“Okay, I think I’m going to go for that mirror,” Amy says after a small break. “It just looks funny, you know?” 

“Oh, I know,” Mark agrees, nodding his head solemnly like the mirror had personally insulted his girlfriend and therefore deserved its untimely demise. Maybe it did, in mirror-talk - he didn’t know afterall. “Get it, Ames!” 

Ethan giggled at their antics and stepped out of the shatter-zone, leaning against the wall next to Mark. They both watched Amy wind up, giggling at the over-exaggerated wink she sent them before she swung the bat. 

Except, just before the impact, Ethan put a hand on his arm. And thank fuck he did, the noise of the mirror shattering made his legs weak in a way he’s only felt a couple of times - the warm hand on him is the only thing that kept him from flinching back into the wall and probably ending up with a nasty bump on his head. He hadn’t expected it to be that _loud_ \- even if he already knew how a mirror sounded when it shattered, courtesy the busted bathroom mirror of his twenty-three-year-old self’s apartment. 

“Knew you weren’t doin’ good,” the younger man murmurs under Amy’s gleeful laughter. Mark swallows indignantly, keeping his gaze on Amy as she smacks the bat against a keyboard and pointedly ignoring Ethan's gaze. “You should’ve said something.”   
“I’m fine.” 

Rolling his eyes, Ethan continues on. “We can go. We thought it’d give you - a good outlet, or something, but if it’s not helping we can go.” 

“Outlet?” 

“Yeah. You’ve been snapping a lot.” 

It’s the truth. They both know it. But that doesn’t make him hurt any less. 

_”You’re just like her,”_ a tiny voice in the back of his mind whispers, _”you’re hurting everyone just like she did,”_ and he wants to cry a little bit. 

Okay, a lotta bit. 

Mark swallows around the lump in his throat and grabs the clock from a table near Amy, throwing it onto the floor with a satisfying clatter. Completely ignorant to the conversation that happened two seconds ago, she cheers and steps over her mangled keyboard to grab at an alarm clock. 

Ethan just watches on, biting the inside of his cheek in thought. Mark tries to ignore that. 

Finally, he joins them in disassembling a small end table, and they reach a comfortable rhythm again. 

It’s nearly an hour later, after they ran out of time and had to pile back into the car, that Mark brings up the conversation again. “Thank you,” he says, wincing slightly when Amy turns down the radio and turns toward him to give him her full attention. Even Ethan is glancing back in the rearview mirror every so often, waiting for what he’s going to say next. Shame floods his system and burns hot and distracting on his cheeks once they make eye-contact, and he quickly turns to face the window. “For - taking me. That was really thoughtful, and I, uh, appreciate it.” 

Before they can placate him with hollow appreciation, he clears his throat and continues on. “I know I’ve been an ass, recently. I’m - _so_ sorry for that. Taking me there, to try and help, was really fucking sweet, especially after how I’ve been acting, and I know I don’t really... deserve that right now. Uh, so thank you.” His face grows hotter, and he rests against the window to cool down before muttering “I love you both.”

Neither of them speak for a minute, and he thinks he’s royally fucked up - which, wow isn’t _that_ a great feeling? - until he glances over at them and they both have a shit-eating grin on their face, if softened a little bit by the sincerity there as well. “Aw,” Amy coos, and Mark knows he’s fucked up in an entirely different way, “the big, tough Marky _loves_ us!” 

“I didn’t know you were such a _sap_ , Marky-poo,” Ethan adds, making Mark kind of wish he had just stayed silent. Embarrassed, but still secretly amused at their antics, he just shakes his head and curls up in his seat, looking back out the window with a fond smile on his face. 

“Shut the fuck up.” 

“Now, that’s not how you speak to someone you love!” Amy pouts. She pokes at his knee, and Mark playfully jerks away from her hand.

Sighing, he crosses his arms over his chest and turns away from them (which isn’t pouting, technically). “I take it all back.” 

“No you don’t,” Ethan says, entirely too smug and gleeful in Mark’s opinion. Still, the fond smile remains, and he kicks at his seat as he closes his eyes. 

“No, I don’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this mostly self-indulgent fluff? yes. yes it is and im not ashamed in the least.


	9. Nine

Mark doesn’t remember the first time he punched a hole in something.

He’d like to say that he does, for the sake of his conscience, but it happened so long ago that he can’t honestly recall anything about it, except for the fact that he kept doing it.

It’s… It’s probably the worst way to deal with anger that he's found. But it’s the quickest, so he understands why he had done it in the past. He’d never forgive himself for it, but he understands.

He doesn’t understand why he punched the fucking wall during the presidential fitness test, though. 

Ethan had jerked back, eyes wide and and mouth open, and Mark felt the drywall crumble around his hand just a little bit more, bouncing off of his hand and falling slowly to the floor. Blood had trickled after, and he had just stepped aside as Mark rushed off to the bathroom to dress his injuries.

That same expression is mirrored now, except this time Mark is holding the handle of a now-shattered mug, watching the way it hangs dejectedly on his hand without the weight of the rest of the cup. 

“Mark,” Ethan whispers, hand clenching and unclenching around his own shatterable mug like he’s afraid Mark will reach over and break it, too. “Mark, what the _fuck_.” 

“I - I don’t - I’m sorry…” He takes a small step forward, just to do _something_ , and the leftover shards of ceramics crunch under his shoes. “Fuck. I need - broom.” 

Ethan makes no move to help him, and the slight glimmer of fear is enough to have Mark jerking into action and scampering into the laundry room. 

Mark cleans up, in the few minutes of silence that follow. Ethan leaves his spot once, and when he comes back Mark can’t look him in the eye.

“Was that one of Amy’s?” he finally asks. There’s a quiet shuffling, like he’s fidgeting with something, but Mark’s gaze is fixed solidly on the dirt speckling the sides of his shoes. He had thought the same thing, when the mug had made that god-awful sound upon breaking, and had thoroughly checked every shard for any sign of Amy being the creator. 

“No, it was store-bought.” 

There’s another silence, and then Ethan is shuffling forward. Mark’s gaze snaps up to him, finally, and almost immediately the younger man jerks his hands up to chest height, palms flat and open as he creeps towards him like he’s approaching a scared dog.

Mark doesn’t even notice that he’s frozen in place until Ethan is in front of him, slowly reaching a hand out. He recoils, instinctively, and his friend flinches back. 

“Okay, I’m just checking your hands,” Ethan says, gesturing to the jaggedy broken handle still lying on the counter. Fuck, he had forgotten about that. “I’m not - I just want to see if you’re okay.”

Mark nods, slowly, and then shakily raises his arms, letting Ethan step forward and give his (surprisingly unscathed) hands a cursory glance. 

“I didn’t mean to,” he mutters, once Ethan returns to his side of the counter. The younger man simply hums and sits down, putting some space between them, and Mark tries not to think about that. “I’m sorry.” 

“I know. Wanna talk about what happened?” 

“Not really,” he jokes. Ethan gives him a flat stare for his efforts. “Sorry. Um.” The coffee machine beeps, finally deciding to work, and he takes a moment to breathe and collect his thoughts. “I - I got angry, and frustrated, so I…” he gestures lamely to the space in front of him, knowing Ethan will understand even if he doesn’t say it. “I don’t know why I did it.” 

Ethan doesn’t say anything after that. Mark watches him toy with the handle of his mug, taking a few slow sips here and there, and then he’s looking down at the counter between them with a drawn-out sigh. “This can’t keep happening, Mark.” 

Mark swallows. It feels like he’s being torn apart - like tiny glass shards are tearing through his skin and leaving nothing but the bloody, raw bits underneath, blistering and sensitive even in the stagnant air of the room. 

The worst part is that he knows he’s the only one to blame. 

“Fuck, I… I know. I _know_.” 

Nodding slowly, Ethan finally looks back up at him. “I’m… not entirely sure what’s going on with you, or how to help, to be honest. I want to, but…” He looks back at the spot where Mark’s mug had been, before he had slammed it against the counter like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “I’m not sure I _can_ help.” 

Ethan’s lip wobbles, and before Mark can say anything about it, he takes a quick breath and shakes out his hands. “Sorry, sorry, this isn’t… isn’t about me. I just - I care about you so much, and -” a tear finally falls, and Mark doesn’t think twice before leaning across the counter and brushing it away with his thumb. 

It’s a little selfish - him comforting Ethan just to get away from his own problems - but neither of them mention it. 

They don’t say much after that anyway, aside from apologies - Ethan for hijacking the situation again and Mark for scaring Ethan (which he doesn’t think he’ll ever apologize enough for) - and the day goes on as normal. 

Because, these little events - while as sporadic as they are - have been considered normal for them for a while. It’s fucked. 

Eventually they both find themselves on the pool deck. Ethan had been taking pictures - some more experimental scenic shots with a new camera he had been wanting to try out - and Mark was taking the dogs out for the seventeenth time that day. 

Not because he felt bad for scaring them earlier, or anything. 

When Chica finally ambles away from him to explore whatever had Henry sniffing furiously at the base of a tree, Ethan calls him over, patting the edge of the hot tub with a stiff smile. 

“Hey,” he mumbles, kicking his feet out a little in the water. Mark plops down next to him, joints groaning at the sudden change in position, and he briefly considers making a joke about it. “Thought we should talk about... earlier. Y’know.” 

“I do know,” Mark hums, joining Ethan in kicking his heels against the wall and making small waves in the water. It’s lukewarm - not cold enough that he’s immediately regretting his decision, but not hot enough for the heater to actually be on. Thank god for L.A.’s “perfect” weather. 

Ethan glances over at him, legs stilling as he watches, and Mark keeps his gaze on the sunlight dancing on the water. Whatever he was looking for must have been easy enough to find, because he starts talking again. “What were you… angry about? I know you, you don’t - you don’t get that angry over nothing.” 

“I don’t know.” It’s not a _lie_ , really. When you’re angry all the time, sometimes the final straw just gets lost in the mess. But he has a feeling Ethan’s not asking about that. 

Ethan just looks at him again, letting his head loll against his shoulder and raising an eyebrow. 

He tries again. “I read something earlier, and it struck a chord, I guess. And I was thinking about it, and the coffee machine wouldn’t _work_ so I just -” His voice strains as he speaks, getting higher as he remembers just how frustrated he was, and Ethan’s now sitting upright like he’s expecting _another_ outburst, so Mark forces himself to breathe. 

“What were you thinking about?” 

Mark blanches at that. He wasn’t prepared to explain himself, for some fucking reason. “Nothing.” 

Ethan blinks, brow furrowing at his abrupt change in demeanor, and scoots towards him a little. “It doesn’t sound like nothing, Mark. You can tell me, man. Take it out on the water if you need to.” 

Grimacing at the poor choice of words, he sighs heavily and kicks out at the water again. Ethan fidgets beside him, clearly not comfortable with the silence but not willing to prod, and he lets out a heavy breath. Ethan was too fucking good for him.

“I… I was reading an article, and - it was a shitty article, completely biased and not credible at all, so I don’t know why I was even reading it - but, basically, it…” he pauses, there, not quite sure how to continue without explaining more. Any explanation would need at least a little bit more context to make any sense at all, if Ethan didn’t immediately pick up on what he meant, that is. 

“Basically it...?” 

He looks back over at Ethan, eyes flickering over his face and seeing just how much love and understanding is there, and immediately pinches himself. 

Fuck, now or never. 

“Uh - it said what I went through was - was my fault. Just… really nasty shit.” His hands flex by his sides, and he quickly picks at the grout between the tile to ground himself. The indignation the article had stirred is fading now, and he feels nauseous thinking about what he just half-confessed to. “‘Cause I’m, you know, a man. So I just… wasn’t valid to them, I guess,” he rushes out with the last burst of anger-confidence he had. 

“That’s - fuck.” Ethan places a warm hand on his knee, and Mark snaps his own hand up to cover it to hide the way he had almost flinched at that. 

Thankfully not mentioning it, Ethan just keeps his hand there, thumb starting to swipe across the skin gently. “I know, total bullshit. But… I don’t know, I just… Sometimes I believe it, you know? And it’s - seeing things like that, it makes it all worse.” 

“You shouldn’t believe it. Whatever it was -”

“I think you know what it was by now, Eth,” Mark interrupts. He’s tired of dancing around it, pretending like they aren’t all acutely aware of what’s been making him act like a pissy toddler lately. 

He can tell Ethan’s looking at him again, but he still stares at the pool water. If he moves his leg in a circle, it kind of looks like the sunlight is eating itself. It’s infinitely more enjoyable than this conversation. 

Finally, the younger man looks away again, and rejoins him in making small waves. “Okay. You being… raped, wasn’t your fault.” He grimaces as he says the word, and Mark’s selfishly glad that he did because otherwise the full-body tensing and twitching in his hands would make him feel stupid. 

Not sure what to say to that, Mark just nods solemnly. He believes it, for now at least, but he has no clue where to go from here. In all honesty, he had kind of expected Ethan to blow up at him, or tell him the same thing.

“I’m serious, Mark. You didn’t - don’t - deserve it. You never have. And gender has nothing to do with it, holy fuck?” His hair sticks straight up when he runs a hand through it, and Mark takes a moment to watch the strands slowly wilt before inevitably falling. “What the fuck, that stupid - you’re completely valid for feeling the way you do but that article is fucking insane and I cannot believe you actually read it.” 

Laughing at that, Mark just shrugs and reaches up to tidy the last bit of hair that had yet to fall back down. “I know. But… Still, what if it was right? I could’ve stopped it. _So_ many times, Eth, and I… I didn’t.” 

Instead of the gentle cooing and pity-talk he’s expecting, Ethan reaches up and pulls his hand down into his lap so he can level him with a dead stare. “Don’t be dumb, Mark, you know it’s not a matter of simply ‘stopping it.’” He pauses for a moment, squeezing Mark’s hand gently, and continues on. His voice is gentler this time, so soft it almost blends in with the rustling of the trees around them, and Mark has to lean in to hear him. “It wasn’t your fault. And it - it really fucking _sucks_ what happened to you, but you’re not alone anymore. Me and Amy are here, and so is everyone else who loves you, even if you don’t tell them. You’re gonna be okay.” 

Blinking back tears, Mark huffs out a soft, disbelieving laugh and shakes his head. “Wow, I think - I think I need to see my optometrist, everything just got really blurry for some reason -” 

“Mark. Stop deflecting, dude.” Ethan’s smiling, but it’s a lot more serious than either of them are used to, and he briefly wonders how Ethan managed to smile seriously before deciding that’s an unimportant thought for another time. 

Instead, he just scoots forward enough to close the gap and rests his head on Ethan’s shoulder, not minding the way the sharp collarbone digs into his forehead one bit.

He overhears Amy and Ethan in the kitchen, later. 

It’s late - late enough that the sun had already gone down and Amy was slowly unwinding from her day out with Kathryn, and he finds them both clutching mugs of warm tea to their chests, shoulders bumping with every miniscule movement. 

He wonders when that happened. 

“So, we talked today,” Ethan says, lowering the mug from his mouth back down to its spot by his heart. He drums his fingers over the ceramic, biting his lip like he’s sorting out his thoughts, and continues on when Amy gently shoulder-bumps him. “Uh, he opened up to me, about why he’s been feeling so angry, lately - he told me I could say this, by the way - and. We were right.” 

Amy hums at that and takes a slow sip of her tea. She doesn’t look surprised - not that Mark expected her to - but he’s carefully taking in every micro-expression that has and could cross her face just in case. Passing the duty of telling her on to Ethan had seemed like a good choice at the time, but now he kind of wishes he were closer, just to analyze her reaction. Even if it scares the shit out of him. 

“Fuck,” she finally murmurs, just quiet enough that Mark can barely hear her. “That’s… I’m glad he finally got that off his chest.” 

Ethan nods, serious expression slowly breaking as his mouth twitches into a smile. He almost feels insulted until Ethan looks directly at him and gives him a stupid grin. “Speaking of - Mark, you can come out now. I could see your bunny slippers.” 

Amy’s head whips over to the wall he had been hiding behind, and she giggles as he shuffles out in the damned bunny slippers, cheeks and neck hot with shame. “Oh my gosh, Mark. I can’t believe you’re wearing those.” 

“They were a gift!” he quickly defends, slowly forgetting why he was embarrassed in the first place as he dives into the playful banter. “Screw you two - you were the one that got them for me, Ethan!” 

“And I’m very glad you enjoy them.” Ethan walks over to him, slinging a surprisingly gentle arm around his shoulders to guide him over to where they’re standing, and he quickly hands over a warm-ish mug that had been sitting on the counter. “Made you tea, bubs.” 

The sentiment makes something fuzzy and warm and gooey curl in his chest, and he takes the mug with slightly unsteady hands. “Thank you.” 

Amy laughs at them and pulls out a candy cane from the cup on the counter, unwrapping it with deft hands before plopping it in his tea. “There,” she says, smiling so bright Mark’s sure he’s going to melt or go blind, “I helped, too.” 

“Thank you very much, Ames.” She grins even wider at that, somehow, and interlaces her free hand with his.

“Anytime.” 

He glances over at Ethan, and he seems to get the hint because he squishes himself into Mark's side, giving him a one-armed hug. 

He feels safe, with the two of them, and he knows it's a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> h,, hey everyone,, aha, that sure was a long time,,
> 
> i'm sorry for waiting so long to write, but unfortunately the hiatus might go on for a little longer. i wasn't really expecting to update today? but you know how it is. shit happens and u finally get inspiration ksfjgh
> 
> anyway,, i'm taking a little break from updating right now - specifically for this fic. i'm definitely not abandoning anything before i can finish it !! but i am going to. idk. spend a little time away from such heavy topics right now lmao dfjkjdhgg
> 
> i hope you guys are doing good !! i love all of u and i hope you're taking care of yourselves if you can <3


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